Today we’re adding two new languages, Basque and Galician, to the list of languages supported by Translator, a Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service. Basque and Galician are both Western European languages spoken by 750,000 and 2.4 million people respectively.

Basque is a language isolate, meaning it is not related to any other modern language. Basque is spoken in northern Spain and southern France in a region that straddles the Pyrenees Mountains. Galician is spoken in northern Portugal and western Spain. It is a Romance language that is closely related to Portuguese. Both languages are co-official languages of Spain.

Using Translator, you can translate to or from any of 100+ languages and dialects, now including Basque and Galician. As we continue to add new languages, Translator is available to help people translate in their personal lives, to help businesses expand their global reach, and is also used to help preserve at-risk and endangered languages.

Break the language barrier

The goal of Translator is to break the language barrier so that people can communicate freely in their language of choice and be understood by anyone around the globe. Whether you are a tourist travelling abroad, recently moved to a new country, or trying to email someone on the other side of the world, Translator powers the tools that help you communicate when and where you need.

The Microsoft Translator app for iOS and Android is your multifunctional personal translator. With the Microsoft Translator app, you can translate text, voice, images, and conversations. Translator for Bing is also available to translate text quickly on the web. You can use the Translator feature of the Edge browser to read webpages from around the world, you can quickly switch between languages on your mobile device with SwiftKey, and use Outlook to communicate with people via email regardless of the language they speak.

Expand the reach of your business

Translator is integrated into Microsoft products and is available as a service to help expand the reach of your business. With Microsoft 365, previously known as Office, you can instantly translate your Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations to make them accessible to a worldwide workforce or global customer base. You can also translate your Outlook emails to communicate around the globe.

Using Translator, a Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service you can add text translation to your apps, websites, workflows, and tools; or use Translator’s Document Translation feature to translate entire documents, or volumes of documents, in a variety of different file formats preserving their original formatting.

You can also build neural translation systems that understand the terminology used in your own business and industry with Custom Translator. The customized translation system can then be used with Text and Document Translation to seamlessly integrate into existing applications, workflows and websites.

To add additional capabilities such as speech-to-text and image translation into your apps, you can use Translator with Cognitive Services such as Speech or Computer Vision.

Preserving endangered languages

In order to train new language models, we must collect a large amount of bilingual training data. That is, materials written in the target language and another language. As many languages around the globe are dying, Translator is helping to preserve at-risk languages. We have worked with language communities across the world to collect and translate materials, and then create language systems. Through this we can ensure that these languages are recorded and preserved for generations to come.

Some of the at-risk languages that we have worked to preserve include Inuktitut, Māori, and Yucatec Maya. If your language community is interested in partnering with Microsoft to add your language to Translator and the products that are using it, and you have access to digital documents in your language and another commonly spoken language, please contact us using this form.